Casting

TV One’s new series, “Love Addiction,” premiering April 25

PHILADELPHIA SUNDAY SUN– Silver Spring, MD – Beginning Wednesday, April 25 from 8-9 PM, TV One will premiere Love Addiction, a new eight-episode, emotion-filled documentary series where therapists and relationship experts help women and men extricate themselves from destructive relationships with the help of the people who love them most.

With the guidance of three top relationship experts, family members and friends come together to try and help loved ones who are immersed in toxic relationships re-discover themselves and their lives in this powerful, transformational intervention series. Men and women no matter how smart, beautiful or worldly, can find themselves in relationships that are demoralizing and soul shattering.

For some women, it’s players; for others, it’s control freaks or countless variations of emotional abusers. Men can be addicted to bad love, too, including those who date ice princesses and gold diggers. In each of these cases, friends and family can be cut off if they say something critical; or be forced to watch silently while someone they love goes through hell.

Under the premise of doing a documentary on relationships, the couples’ relationship patterns are captured on camera. Once the loved one’s destructive situation is established, family and friends gather with one of three relationship experts for an intervention. Through this intervention, by the people who love them the most, these love addicts have the opportunity to re-discover themselves, gain self-esteem, and be enlightened as to the type of love they really do deserve. Ultimately, the love addict will have to choose: to remain in the relationship and risk support of their loved ones or to leave the love-gone-wrong for a life so right.

Will the loved one break it off and chart a new path? Can they stay away from the toxic relationship? The series shares their decision and then checks back several weeks later to see if they’ve freed themselves or fallen back into the negative relationship.

Therapists and relationship experts help the love addicted and their families deal with these crises, including psychologist Dr. Alduan Tartt, parenting, teen and relationship expert and author of The RING FORMULA: How To Be The Only One He Ever Needs; personal growth and relationship expert Hasani Pettiford, author of Black Thighs, Black Guys & Bedroom Lies; and Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis, psychologist, Pepperdine University assistant professor, author of several critically acclaimed books, including Thriving in the Wake of Trauma: A Multicultural Guide and Past-President of the Society for the Psychology of Women.

“We all know friends or family members who almost serially seem to end up in bad relationships, or who fall under the toxic spell of a bad romance, and we wish we could help them realize how much better they deserve to be treated,” said TV One President and CEO Wonya Lucas. “This series is not only riveting and full of emotion, it also should provide some great advice for those with troubled relationships and even those who want to keep their relationships healthy.”

In the April 25 premiere episode, viewers meet 29-year-old Marcus Foy, whose mother Adrienne Nixon has always encouraged him to follow his heart. But once Marcus begins dating 51-year-old Suzi (a woman older than Adrienne), Adrienne is beside herself. She believes Suzi is too old for Marcus, is way past her prime, and can’t give her grandbabies; Adrienne is also concerned over Suzi’s continual pill-popping of painkillers. Marcus loves his mother, but wants her to butt out of his life.

He’s happy. He wants to marry Suzi… and once her divorce is final he plans on making Suzi his wife. Suzi, a former Las Vegas showgirl, says she’s been living her life for everyone else… and now it’s her turn to be happy. She is currently separated from her husband and says the divorce will be final any day now. However Marcus lives with Suzi in a house that her husband, Tony still financially maintains. Between Suzi’s doctor visits, and dinner parties with friends, the couple constantly bickers. Adrienne and Marcus’ best friend, Jacob, believe if they don’t stage a love intervention before the couple marries, they will lose Marcus forever.